


Future Imperfect

by PockySquirrel



Category: Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PockySquirrel/pseuds/PockySquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first night after Ivan joins the team. How two Rangers from the past come to grips with a future that neither of them expected to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivulet027](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivulet027/gifts).



“Are you sure you’re okay with just living here in the base, Ivan?” Shelby asked. “I mean, you could just as easily stay with one of us. My place is small, but I wouldn’t mind having the company.”

Tyler, in his effort to refrain from immediately blurting out all the myriad reasons why that was a bad idea, made a muted noise that sounded vaguely like a dismayed cat being stuffed into shopping bag. Riley cast a confused frown in his direction, but fortunately Ivan demurred before Tyler could embarrass himself any further.

“Your offer is too kind, milady, but the base will be more than adequate for my needs. And what’s more, if these instruments were to detect a monster in the night, being here would allow me to respond with greater haste. A knight must always be at the ready when duty calls.”

“Looks like it’s settled, then,” Kendall said. “I guess you’ve got a new roommate, Koda.”

Koda looked positively overjoyed by the news, and clapped Ivan on the shoulder with enough force that he stumbled forward a step.

“You part of team now,” he said. “Part of tribe. This is my home, I share with you.”

Ivan recovered his balance, smiling a little as he returned the gesture with a great deal less violence. 

“I consider it an honor, Sir Koda.”

“If I remember correctly, Koda’s bed is still back in the storage room,” Kendall continued, her mind still on the logistics and practicalities. “Koda, Chase, you two go get it and we’ll find someplace suitable to set it up. We’ll need a few more things, but that will have to wait until we have time for a shopping trip.”

Shelby, who had been pouting subtly ever since Ivan had turned down her offer to become his roommate, perked up a little at the mention of shopping. Ivan just looked confused.

“If it is Koda’s bed, then should it not be Koda who is sleeping in it?”

“Let me rephrase,” Kendall clarified. “It was Koda’s bed before we found out that Koda and beds don’t exactly get along.”

Koda shrugged. “I fell off. Better to sleep on floor. More comfortable. You can have bed, if you want. Is yours now.”

“Most appreciated,” Ivan replied, visibly amused.

“You know,” Tyler wondered aloud as Chase and Koda retreated to the storage room to retrieve the bed. “It just occurred to me. Where does Keeper sleep?”

“Honestly?” Kendall replied. “I’m not even sure _if_ he sleeps.”

By the time Chase and Koda had the bed out of storage, Kendall had scouted out a corner of the cavern that would be suitable as Ivan’s makeshift bedroom. It was a modestly sized alcove similar to Koda’s ‘room’, close enough to that and to the rest of the base, but with a wall of rock jutting out to afford some privacy. Upon trying to assemble the bed, Chase discovered that the frame was cracked; apparently having fallen victim to Koda’s trusty staff when the caveman heard the mattress springs squeak and been convinced there was something inside that needed smashing. So the broken frame was discarded, but Ivan assured everyone that putting the box spring and mattress on the floor would be good enough. 

After helping Ivan get settled in, the other Rangers said their goodnights and departed, one by one. Kendall was the last to leave, and only reluctantly. With Ivan now officially part of the team, there was work to be done. Tests to run, Chargers to build. Koda wandered off to his cave to sleep, while Ivan chivalrously offered to stay up and help Kendall with her work, despite really not having a clue what he was doing. But with as hectic as everything had been recently, Kendall just didn’t have the stamina for one of her all-nighters. She gave up, yawning as she told Ivan she’d see him in the morning. 

That left Ivan alone in the base, the cavern quiet save for the hum of Kendall’s equipment and the faint sound of Koda’s snoring echoing off the stone walls. Ivan wanted to explore a bit more, but had to admit to himself, grudgingly, that he was just as weary as Kendall had been. And a knight needed proper rest if he was to be in peak condition for battle. So he retired to his new quarters, evaluating the space as he prepared to sleep. A cave made for an unusual habitat, especially a cave equipped with such a luxurious bed. But in his travels as a knight, he had slept in all manner of strange places, most of them much worse than this. It would certainly do, at least for the time being. 

He stripped out of his armor and clothing, changing into the set of borrowed nightclothes his teammates had found along with the bedding. Pajamas, it seemed, were another modern contrivance that Koda had decided he wanted no part of. The fit was a bit baggy and the sleeves of the pajama top had been ripped off, but they were comfortable at least. He folded his clothes and left them along with his armor, neatly arranged in a corner of the room. His sword, he kept next to the bed by force of habit. Once everything was to his liking, Ivan climbed into the bed and settled in, marveling at how much even something so simple as a bed had changed in the past 800 years. It was certainly comfortable - more fit for a prince than someone of his standing - but the feel of it was strange. Nonetheless, it wasn’t long before he surrendered to fatigue.

***

Ivan awoke, disoriented, to stifling blackness. The last thing he remembered was fighting the monster, trying to protect Prince Colin. But where was the prince? Where was the monster? For that matter, where was he?

He had no sense of his own body, of whether he was standing or lying down. He didn’t feel any type of restraints or bonds, but found to his terror that he was unable to move. Even thought seemed an effort, his mind distant and sluggish, memories slipping away as he tried to grasp at them and maintain his awareness. He had been fighting the monster, there was a flash of light, a sensation of being pulled, dragged, and then…

He was trapped.

He panicked, struggling to the extent that he was able. He imagined his hands, hands that he could no longer feel, clawing and scrabbling at the walls of this invisible prison cell. He felt as though he was screaming, but he could not hear himself. And then, he felt a presence wash over him in a frigid wave. An invisible force held him down, stilled him.

“Quiet, you!” 

The words echoed not in his ears, but in his mind. The monster. Fury. That was where he was, he realized. He knew the monster’s name now, because their minds were one in the same. His hands were Fury’s claws. The darkness lifted just enough that, if he managed to maintain his focus, he could see out into the world through Fury’s eyes. He had not merely been trapped; he had been absorbed.

A fate worse than death. 

Fury seemed to sense his despair and reveled in it, the emotion coming through to Ivan acutely.

“That’s right, warrior,” he felt the voice come over him again, sneering. “You belong to me, now. And once I find the Energem, that will be mine as well. Your power will allow me to wield it.”

The gem? As far as Ivan knew, Prince Colin had it. The royal family of Zandar had to be protected, at any cost. He struggled again, in renewed determination, only to once again find himself blanketed by Fury’s presence. Only this time, it was no mere demonstration of his power. Fury bent the full force of his will against Ivan’s, forcing him to the back of their shared consciousness, suffocating him. He could feel his senses, his awareness slipping away from him once again.

***  
Ivan came to with a strangled shout, sitting bolt upright in his new bed. His hand reflexively darted out for his sword; his fingers bumped the hilt in the darkness and the sheathed blade fell to the floor with a clatter. The sound made him jump, but it also served to clear some of the haze from his mind. Now fully awake, he sat in silence save for the ragged sound of his breathing. His hands were still trembling, his heart still racing. He had been sweating, and his new bedding felt clammy and damp.

He was free of Fury, at last. But it seemed that the monster would continue to plague his memories, and that was a foe that would not be so easily defeated. 

A sound from outside the room had him reaching for his sword again, until a familiar face with its surrounding tangle of dark hair even more knotted-up and unruly than usual peeked into the entryway. Koda. Not a threat, but Ivan was still more than a little embarrassed to be seen in this state.

“I heard sound,” Koda explained himself. “Thought maybe you fell off.”

“No, Koda,” Ivan sighed. “I did not.”

Koda nodded sagely, his brow furrowed. “Bad dream?”

Ivan’s head snapped up to regard the caveman in surprise. Koda had already proven to be smarter than he looked, but it was still a shock to think of him as insightful. Part of Ivan wanted to deny it, to send Koda on his way and attempt to go back to sleep. But it didn’t seem right to be dishonest to his new teammate. And besides, Koda already had him pegged. 

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Come with me,” Koda replied decisively. When Ivan was slow to move, he came over to the bed and began tugging insistently at Ivan’s arm until he finally untangled himself from the sheets and followed.

Koda led Ivan to the far end of the base, close to where the cave adjoined the museum’s basement storage area via secret entrance. There, Kendall had set up a small kitchenette, originally for her own use during long hours of studying the Energems and building various forms of Ranger technology. But of course, the rest of the team had started making use of it as well. It wasn’t much; just a sink, a microwave, a couple sets of plastic storage drawers stocked with dishes and assorted snacks, a mini-fridge, and a coffee maker. The coffee maker was of particular interest to Ivan, who had never seen such a contraption before. As Koda rummaged in one of the drawers, he reached out to examine it more closely.

“Don't touch!”

Ivan froze at Koda’s warning. “Why, is it dangerous?” 

Koda shook his head. “Is Kendall’s. This one is new. Last one, I broke. She was very angry.”

“Duly noted,” Ivan said, withdrawing his hand. 

He decided it would be safest to not touch anything else, and instead watched as Koda continued pawing through the drawers. The caveman ultimately came up with two small, square packets, and a device shaped vaguely like a kettle with a cord hanging off of it.

“This for making water hot with no fire,” Koda explained, holding up the kettle-thing. “Just put this end in wall, then press button.”

Ivan watched as he did exactly that, filling the kettle from the sink before plugging the cord into the nearest wall outlet and turning it on. He was clearly well-practiced in this procedure, but still looked pleased with the accomplishment. He held out the packets next, handing one to Ivan to examine. 

“Tea,” he said. “Is just dry leaves, but you soak in water and drink.”

“I am familiar with tea,” Ivan said, gingerly tearing open the package and extracting the tea bag inside. “Although I have never seen it in this form.”

Once the kettle had finished doing whatever sorcery by which it was heating the water, Koda poured out the contents - steaming, sure enough - into a pair of mugs. He took the tea bag back from Ivan and dropped it into one of the cups before returning it. Koda took a container of sugar from the countertop next to Kendall’s precious coffee maker and dumped a large amount into his own mug before adding the tea. Ivan left his own plain. 

“Koda,” Ivan asked. “If I may ask, what made you decide to do this?”

“You had bad dream,” Koda stated the obvious. “When you have bad dream, you get up and drink tea. It helps, so you feel better. Chase taught me, when he stayed here.”

“Chase used to live here?”

Koda nodded. “When he first got Energem, I was still frozen. He and Kendall found me, brought me here. Chase not have place to stay yet, so he stayed here too. He taught me to use this.”

He indicated the kettle. On closer inspection, Chase’s name was written on the side in faded Sharpie marker. That explained one thing, at least. 

“One night,” Koda continued. “I had bad dream, like you. That’s why I fell off bed. Chase heard and came in. And he said, come have tea with him. It helped.”

“And now you’re doing the same for me,” Ivan finished.

“Yes!” Koda answered, clearly happy that Ivan had seen the point. For all that he had learned in such a short period of time, communication was still difficult for Koda at times, and his halting, broken speech could be difficult to follow. Being understood still felt like an accomplishment.

Ivan toyed with the string and tag attached to the tea bag as it steeped, his expression thoughtful. “You’ve had nightmares as well?”

“Yes. Chase say, everyone does, but more when something bad happens. I dream something bad happen to my brother. Or falling into cold water, and--” Koda trailed off, lacking the word to complete his thought. He brought one hand up to his throat, clenching his fingers in a choking gesture.

“You couldn’t breathe,” Ivan replied, understanding. He imagined the experience - so similar and yet so different from his own - and looked upon his teammate with a new empathy and respect. 

“You and I are more alike than one might guess, my friend,” Ivan said. 

“You dream of falling, too?”

“Not quite,” Ivan answered. Under normal circumstances, he would have been more reluctant to bare his heart in this way. But Koda, in addition to having demonstrated an obvious desire to help Ivan with this, was a fellow Power Ranger. They were comrades now, part of the same team. And Ivan could therefore trust Koda with this just as he trusted him with his life in battle.

“I dreamed of Fury,” he confessed. “After he trapped me inside of himself, I woke up, unaware of where I was. I could see nothing, I could feel nothing. I tried to move, to free myself, and then I felt his presence, and learned what he had done. I felt...helpless.”

“Sounds scary,” Koda said knowingly. 

“It was,” Ivan admitted. “And I suppose that I’ve simply been so happy to finally be free of him that I didn’t consider what power the memory would have.”

Koda was quiet for awhile, wheels clearly in motion behind his dark eyes. Ivan took an experimental drink of his tea in the meantime and determined that it was actually quite good, for something that scarcely resembled real tea at all. Still, it didn’t taste the way he remembered. He wondered, briefly, if Prince Phillip would consider sending him some from Zandar so that he could compare. But he just as quickly determined that asking would be much more of an imposition than he would dare place upon the prince.

“Ivan,” Koda finally said, drawing the knight’s attention back to him. He spoke slowly, the care with which he chose each word speaking to their importance. “You Power Ranger now, like me. But...you were warrior before, too. So...already know how to be brave. And strong. Fury strong too, but...not strong as you. We beat him, together.”

Ivan smiled a little, in spite of himself. What he felt at the moment was certainly anything but strong and brave, but Koda certainly did have a way of reminding him that he did have those qualities, nightmares or no. Enough to be a Knight of Zandar. Enough to be a Power Ranger.

“Together,” he agreed. “Because we’re a team now, right?”

“Yes,” Koda said firmly. “You part of team now. Part of tribe. Means you are...family.”

The word touched something in Ivan that he hadn’t realized had started to become hollow over his endless centuries with Fury. His family...he had been just aware enough of the passage of time to know, at least on some level, that they were gone. Everyone he had ever known was gone. That was a reality that he could scarcely wrap his mind around. But here was Koda, the only other person on the planet who had gone through the same thing, the only other person who could possibly understand. The Energems had brought them together, countless years after death should have taken them both. The Energems had made them a team, but now Koda was calling them something more than that. Everything he had ever known was gone, but in the Rangers he was trying to rebuild a life for himself. Something that was perhaps not a replacement for what he had lost, but was at least good enough that he didn’t have to feel alone anymore. 

“My family is gone,” Ivan said quietly. “As is yours. But...if the other Rangers are your family now, then perhaps they can be mine as well. Koda, it would honor me to call you brother.”

Koda’s face lit up, and he shot forward to embrace Ivan with such speed and abruptness that Ivan very nearly dropped his mug. As usual, he didn’t seem to know his own strength, and he was reluctant to release his teammate - no, brother - from the hug, even when Ivan politely informed him that the arms around his rib cage were making it difficult to breathe. At least he had it in him to apologize after finally letting go.

Koda was a strange person, Ivan thought. But, he had named him a brother, and he intended to uphold that in word as well as deed. The future was an odd place, and the Rangers were an odd family. But Ivan knew he could count on them, and really that was all he needed.


End file.
